“We’re always going to encourage people to call 911 just because we get better location information from that, we can obtain information a lot quicker from a caller and all of our 911 operators go through extensive training where we listen to things like background noise and we’re able to obtain a lot more information about the call from that but unfortunately there’s situation where that’s not an option,” said Dawn Hill, dispatch supervisor in a prior interview. “Such as an active shooter or a domestic violence situation so we want to look at what we can do to provide to our community to keep them safe.”

The department said the service should only be used when there is an emergency situation and a call is not possible. Examples include if the caller is deaf, hard-of-hearing, speech impaired, or when speaking out loud would put the caller in danger.